A Gallery of Rob Liefled’s Anatomical Abominations

Defying the laws of biology, physics and perspective all at once. Impressive.

So as comics is my new thing (see this post), I’ve been looking far and wide for them, and some…interesting images seem to come up. Comic book heroes have always had exaggeration of the human form, but one artist in particular seems to have lost all touch with reality when it comes to human anatomy: Rob Liefeld.

Now I know I’m not the first to make this observation, and I won’t be the last, but I felt it worth re-examining as it’s just so goddamn ridiculous. If you think the above bastardization of Captain America is bad, check out the rest of the gallery below.

She doesn’t give birth, babies just fall out of her.

They added two arms…and removed her rib cage while they were at it.

Diagnosis: Elephantitis of the torso. Outlook: Stupid

I thought someone photoshopped this as a joke to make fun of him further. Nope.

Unless this scene involves her spine snapping, something is very wrong here.

About The Author

Paul

I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely, and I've learned a lot these last few years at Forbes. My work has appeared on TVOvermind, IGN, and most importantly, a segment on The Colbert Report at one point.

55 Comments

Sheriff BartAugust 17, 2012

This style was once considered the ‘in’ thing. The early 90’s were a shameful time to be a comic book artist.

Hey anon, did you read the post or look at the pictures? The thing is that Liefled has some talent, but it’s clear that he has no interest in improving or (as the quote DocDoom linked) accepting taking criticism. Most artists strive for at least getting the basics down (anatomy, perspective, etc) before they take any serious steps toward the professional world, and it’s pretty clear that Liefled is a couple crayons short of a 24-pack as far as anatomical verisimilitude goes.

The whole thing is veeeery 90s, but it’s also Rob to a T. Stan is passively aggressively taking the piss of his style the whole way through. But at the time Rob was a bigger artist than Todd, so he was given more rope (and leather straps and spandex).

There’s also a beautiful moment, I think in video 3 if I remember correctly, where Stan Lee specifically says “Rob, those feet need more definition”. And Rob just nods, then goes and adds more straps, pockets, and armblades.

First of all, comics aren´t about highly stylized art. Comics are about telling a story, your art has to support or even upgrade your story; Liefeld doesn´t do neither of the above. And there´s a difference between highly stylized art and lack of fundamentals. This guy sucks at anatomy, perspective, proportions, everything. I don´t know how he broke into comics, but he surely did some great danger to the taste of the audience.

I dont have any particular love for his style… but that doesn’t mean it has no merits… His lack of perspective and proportion are PART of his style. Ifite were anatomically correct then it would serve to only make him more mundane. Some like say Alex Ross overdoes realism in my opinion, and is one of my least favorite artists.. Doesnt mean that he is without merit. I can recognize that. And yes, comics are indeed about stylized art AND storytelling. If you find him trashy then whatever.
You can’t do “damage” to the taste of the audience. If the audience already likes “trash” then that was their taste to begin with.

You haven’t offered any positive argument in favour of Liefield here. Instead you’ve merely questioned the legitimacy of the critical parameters and suggested (accurately) that a large part of the audience at the time of the late 80s/early 90s comics boom had appalling taste.

Personally I think Liefield is awful but I I view him as part of a trend of which the likes of Jim Lee, and Whilce Portacio are equally culpable and frankly I regard Lee as having the most malign influence.

Im not really championing Liefield.. I think I already said that. Though there was a nice positive argument for him by someone else further up. Im just disgusted with this obsession with body image in comics.. Im sick and tired of seeing people complain about unrealistic body images in art. Its ART! It owes nothing to insecure people who compare themselves to fictional characters.

Brian HullFebruary 7, 2016

As soon as you try to welcome personal taste into the realm of truth and untruth you’ve contradicted yourself.

As an artist and game developer myself i have all kinds of reasons why i love certain artists (like Cleavenger) and hate others (like Vallejo), but I would never try to convince someone else that he’s a no talent hack who shouldn’t be in the business. Though i will definitely make jokes about it…

I for one am glad we have such a VARIETY of talent and presentation out there- and Rob’s characters are often SO ridiculous looking that, in my opinion, they have a magic all their own.

percy blakeneyFebruary 23, 2016

”As soon as you try to welcome personal taste into the realm of truth and untruth you’ve contradicted yourself.”

Well, that’s another can of worms and far too large to digest here. I will simply express the broad view that I think that’s an intellectually lazy perspective. In the broadest terms there may be no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’; however, within a particular medium and with a reasonable expectation of a function being fulfilled a set of critical parameters can be accepted as guidelines (although it should never be at the expense of an open mind…).

Your perspective essentially denies the concept of good and bad taste and supports a view that all criticism is redundant and even counter-productive.
I guess I’m happy for you that you find something to appreciate in Liefield’s art but I think the argument you’re making in this instance, whilst generous, is both wishy-washy and counter-productive.

DavidMay 24, 2015

The knock against Liefeld has always been that his style betrays laziness, a total lack of understanding of what he’s actually drawing (anatomy, technology, etc.) that other artists, even “heavily stylized” ones, would put the time in to understand. Liefeld covered this up by using too many lines, dozens of lens flares in a single shot, etc. Lee and McFarlane were not criticized the same way, because they clearly weren’t as lazy as Liefeld was.

There’s no question Liefeld brought a certain energy and a certain freshness to the industry (and I admit I was a fan in the beginning) but looking back it’s clear he’s not a good artist. He had one male face, one female face, and maybe three expressions for each. That’s excusable when you’re starting out – after 20 years it’s embarrassing.

I don’t think many in the Liefeld sucks camp care about the body image argument, it’s more that he’s taking fantasy beyond the pale of believability by not understanding perspective, or transparently avoiding drawing hard things (his avoidance of drawing feet is well-chronicled). And he doesn’t appear to own a ruler.

Look at the Captain America drawing. Roughly sketch out where the rest of his arm should be. Artistic decision by Liefeld to leave it out? Perhaps. Much more likely he just didn’t think it through, or realized it afterwards and was too lazy to fix it.

Couldn’t you say the same about nearly every modern art painting that exists? I just saw outlines of stick figures on canvas going for thousands of dollars in downtown ATX. if it took him longer than 10 minutes per painting he must have been in a wrestling match at the same time…

There’s a TON of crap artwork out there- and i think Rob’s anatomy is gadawful, but his ACTION shots do make me believe the motion is actually happening.

On top of that i have absolutely ZERO patience for sub-intellectuals who argue that demi gods with super powers should have the same waist-ass-muscle ratio as real humans in the real world. If you cannot separate fantasy from reality that is your own handicap, and no fault of the artist, or the viewers who enjoy his/her work.

Your art doesn’t have to support your story or upgrade it. There are plenty of comics with crappy artists and vise versa. Also his style was pretty popular during the 90’s and involved more detail and flowing of movement and poses. This was a radical change from 80’s and earlier comics that were stiff and boring. He influenced alot of other comic artists and built a new model for them to improve on. He broke into the comic industry because his style was diffrent and dynamic and in demand. Welcome to the comic book industry.

since art has to be anatomically perfect, i’m not sure why this guy isn’t in jail amiright??

Will shineMay 4, 2015

I think alot of people critisizing his art didn’t read alot of comics during the 90’s because this style was pretty popular by alot of artists. His style is unique and diffrent and in the comic industry that is a must. There are plenty of artists who can draw anatomy great but they all look stiff. His style was a blend of detail with dynamic movement. His comics influenced me and it’s because of his style I incorperated alot of detail in my characters now. Facial features, long flowing hair etc. Some I did not like but hey as an artist you have to learn to take what you like and leave the rest.

”I think a lot of people critisizing his art didn’t read a lot of comics during the 90’s because this style was pretty popular by alot of artists.”

…er, actually the fact that this (shallow, empty, utterly characterless) style of art was popular in the 90’s (and was often treated as if writing was unnecessary) is precisely why the 90’s are considered to be the very worst era in the history of comics.

People who didn’t read a lot of comics in the 90’s did so for a good reason -they had taste.

Actually the 90’s was the highest era as for the comic industry…are you sure you was reading comics in the 90’s?? Image first came out and many popular series sprung up. Vertigo comics..Top Cow comics..90’s era brought in a whole new fresh era of new comics. Demand for comics was at an all time high. In fact more people read comics in the 90’s and the industry bloomed. Cartoons reflected the demand. I’m going to guess your a millenium baby because everyone knows the 90’s was a great era for comics….except you…

the 90’s was also known for people buyinig multiples of comics because they were told they would become rare and worth money

“You can sell lots of comics to the same person, especially if you tell
them that you are investing money for high guaranteed returns,” Gaiman
said. “But you’re selling bubbles and tulips, and one day the bubble
will burst, and the tulips will rot in the warehouse.”

-Neil Gaiman

More variants were released, and people bought tons of those too.

Between 1993 and 1996, revenues from comics and trading cards began to collapse

the biggest industry crash in comics happened in the 90’s

There are some good and some bad things from the 90’s you ask one person about it and the 90’s were amazing for comics, you ask another and they remember the bad like marvel almost going out of business

percy blakeneyMay 13, 2015

You couldn’t be more wrong. I stopped buying comics in 1991 because they had become so bad.

As has been pointed out the boom, which was really fuelled by the quality of comics in the 80s (Claremont, Miller, Moore) was hugely abused as the companies tried to gouge the market and the likes of Image (and yes the success of newer comics companies at the expense of Marvel and DC was a good thing) put out appalling art driven fare and writing suffered horribly.

90’s comics are a byword for poor quality and you are staggeringly ignorant if you don’t know that. Like all generalizations that’s not the whole truth of course but there is still plenty to justify the view.

Liefield is a soft target but the technically more adept likes of Jim Lee are no better in my eyes. In the words of a genuinely great comic book artist, Barry Windsor-Smith (and this is taken directly from a source as mainstream as Wikipedia btw):

In a 1996 interview with The Comics Journal, writer/illustrator Barry Windsor-Smith criticized the depth of the work of artists like Lee and Rob Liefeld, and those whom they influenced, (whom he referred to as “the Liefelds and the Lees”), stating, “Your Jim Lees and all this lot, their product hasn’t got anything to do with them, you know? There is no emotional investment…I look at Jim Lee’s work, and the guy’s learning how to draw. He has some craft to what he does…I don’t think it has even crossed their minds that comic books can be a medium for intimate self-expression.”

Lobo De SadeJuly 13, 2015

You’re forgetting about series like Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Sandman, etc etc etc, all from the 90’s. So yea, the 90’s were a great time for comics, also without 90’s Image, we wouldn’t have all the great modern Image comics coming out today. And there haven’t been any revolutionary comics in a long time, since the 90’s, everything now, at least from the big two, is event after event So you’re wrong. You’re just another fool on a bandwagon, too afraid to be honest with themselves, or two stupid to look past certain things.

Steve BakewellJanuary 23, 2016

LOL Image comics was garbage… There’s not one thing i like about Image Comics.

percy blakeneyFebruary 23, 2016

No, I’m not forgetting those things (which were excellent), rather I am remembering the heaps of garbage that were tossed off which became the overwhelming and defining norm of 90s comics. Every era produces it great comics.
You can argue that the average comic of the 70s or 80s were bland and childish (accurately!) and certainly not that great -but compared to the depths that the average comic of the 90s sunk to they look like masterpieces. The truly shocking quality of the X-Men comics in the 90s or Clone Saga-era Spider Man is so poor it’s hard to believe it actually got published (and as it happens Liefield bears considerable responsibility for that trend too -though as a writer not as an artist).

LOL…”Stylized” HAHAHA! Leifeld’s “art” looks like what you might find on a vaguely talented 16 year old’s duo tang 3 weeks into the school year. It’s hilariously awful! It’s not “stylized.” Its the best he can do…

Thanks for saying you skipped print media. Began to wonder after reading something where a character said,”I don’t think he’s ever read a newspaper,” what the % of kids, say 20 years old, is, who have never read a newspaper?

—
[TL:DR]: This guy never wanted to use sequential art to express himself.

Any grown-up willing to accept they swallowed the whole collectible bait
can see the overall working formula of their businesses practices.
And worst of it, it came to show a whole generation what the medium
had to offer, when they actually only offered the mediocre by an excess
of quantities.
Long live the fallen wall and The 90’s US-trategy analogue with the
Medieval Dark Ages, profiting on ignorance and making the world
run away from comics and stupid proportions, stiff faces, repeated poses,
and of course, bad scripts, pathethic tie-ins and so forth [/TL:DR].
—

Thank God for the readers of great artists’ comics.
There can’t be a great comic book without a great artist.

Then, there are the other artists that under the “avant-garde” label
justify bad art being art, the ones that think of themselves as criticized Kirbys
(cannot be “Kirbies”, there will always be one), when in fact, it is clear they just
see a page to fill with anything that can be described as hand-drawn (the early and
inexpert use of Photoshop is so obvious) to qualify as comic book material.

Many not-too-good comic artists have at least a great sense for meeting deadlines,
and that is why they keep on working diligently (and have no time for signings,
interviews, Conan swords or the money to hire other talents to make you earn
more cash under the author-owned flag-bearer excuse without having to draw a thing).

It is easy to do the math with the fact that, if you draw every day, you’ll be exponentially better,
specially if you’re allegedly fueled by personal energy and enthusiasm. Take the case of an artist
that should have been noticed properly if this 90’s sequential pamphlet boom hadn’t been there
(fueled by those that fancy themselves as fans of something because of the money they put in it),
and clearly far more thought provoking, like Dave Sim and his impossible Cerebus (1979-2004).

That is an example of how real energy and enthusiasm works.
Guess how many hours a day this guy was doing creator-owned material for the art?

Now, if you do every effort possible to avoid the very basics of drawing some lines 30′ a day
by setting up schemes involving teenagers, collectibles and money (or commercials),
and people out there (no need to guess their IQs since you sold them garbage the first time)
buy your works in order to defend it for a sustained amount of time, then clearly, why
bothering with learning to draw, something even Ron Wood found himself time for?

Of course this is obvious and I’m mocking people that think
they know a thing about sequential art just because they
happen to have 2 copies of forgettable material to sell
to someone in the future, like if doing that was a way of being a fan.
Spoiler alert: you don’t know even the 10% of it.
After this post, you’ll be 10% more knowledgeable.
———————————————————————————
Brian Bolland. Milo Manara. Takeshi Obata. Lucho Olivera (RIP).
———————————————————————————

It is OK to be a kid, have fun, and look out for cool things to idolize.
It is not OK to see comics as a thing to collect just because that is what all your friends do.
It is OK to be a genius and have equal moments of awesome and moments of awkward.
It is not OK pretending to be a genius you are not just because you make a lot of money
selling something you don’t even love to others as art.
It is OK not willing to read the plethora of alternatives that always were there
for sequential art enthusiasts.
It is not OK pretending you know about the medium consuming this abhorrent material.

The names between lines (heh) are of 100% sequential artists.
British; Latin-European; Japanese; Argentinian ones. 12 of them.
No need for American examples of better artists/persons than Rob Liefeld.

These are the names of writer/artists with a distinctive (and for some “ugly”) graphic style that have used
the medium, and not the upcoming merchandising scheme, to show what passionate art entails.
The ones that are still alive, are still drawing.
—————————————————————————————————-
Mick Anglo (RIP). Steve Ditko. Jack Kirby (RIP). Go Nagai. Dave Stevens (RIP).
Roberto Fontanarrosa (RIP). Nobuhiro Watsuki. Quino. Dante Quinterno (RIP).
—————————————————————————————————-
And that is the punchline of this manifesto:
great artists never stop doing art. Not even dead.
Checkmate en-masse. Enjoy your Pringles.-